Tissure culture propagation of plants is known in the art. For Example, T. Murashige, Ann. Rev. Plant Physiol., 25, 135-166 (1974) reviews the art with the citations of 256 references.
J. F. Knauss, Proc. Fla. State Hort. Soc., 89, 363-365 (1976), has described a partial tissue culture method of propagating selected Ferns from spores.
The cloning or tissue culturing of plants has also caught the public interest as demonstrated by newspaper reports i.e. Koon, Wall Street Journal of Aug. 7, 1978 and Seibert, The New York Times, Aug. 6, 1978.
A major problem in providing relatively labor free, relatively high yield tissue culture derived plants is the number of individual transfers and treatments required in taking a growth point-containing plant tissue particle through its development to a hardened-off plant capable of surviving a typical plant nursery environment.